The number of migrants attempting to cross the English Channel to the UK has increased by over 30 percent from last year, the EU border agency Frontex has revealed.
In April, the agency found that the first three months of the year saw the number of detections increase by 56 percent, to 11,635, compared to the same period in 2023.
The Home Office reported 7,567 illegal immigrants arriving in the UK in small boats for the first for months of 2024, an increase on 5,946 people recorded at the same time last year.
In February, Frontex signed an agreement with the Home Office to enhance border security and management. Both parties committed to detecting, preventing, and combating illegal immigration and cross-border crime.
Home Secretary James Cleverly called the arrangement with Frontex a “crucial step” in stopping the small boat crossings.
Prevention Figures
Reporting on the number of people prevented from reaching UK shores, the Home Office said last week that in 2023 the French police managed to block 26,000 people from crossing.Preventions data are “operational estimates,” which the UK gets from the French authorities.
The latest available figures show that in the week to May 5, 849 migrants were prevented from crossing the Channel, while 1,409 people arrived in the UK.
The following week, the Home Office recorded 879 people arriving in small boats and 484 prevented from departing France.
“We continue to work closely with French police who are facing increasing violence and disruption on their beaches as they work tirelessly to prevent these dangerous, illegal and unnecessary journeys,” a Home Office spokesperson said in a statement.
Rwanda Safety
The government’s Rwanda scheme is meant to serve as a deterrent for illegal immigrants embarking on dangerous journeys to reach the UK.“The unacceptable number of people who continue to cross the Channel demonstrates exactly why we must get flights to Rwanda off the ground as soon as possible,” the Home Office said.
Following a meeting between Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Austrian counterpart Karl Nehammer in Vienna, the government’s Rwanda plan received further backing.
“The leaders agreed that working with designated safe third countries is part of the answer to protecting Europe from the impact of illegal migration and preventing people from making perilous journeys – such as the UK’s innovative Rwanda style model,” Downing Street said in a statement.
However, the government’s Safety of Rwanda policy has stumbled on a legal challenge by the charity Asylum Aid.
Asylum Aid said on Tuesday that it had formally filed its legal challenge at the High Court in London. The charity claims that the Rwanda policy, published in late April, is inconsistent with the Rwanda bill.
The policy doesn’t account for the risk of Rwanda sending people to another country where they could face human rights abuse, Asylum Aid said.
“We are very worried that unless the guidance is urgently corrected, people could unlawfully be removed to Rwanda, in breach of the UK’s human rights obligations,” the charity’s Executive Director Alison Pickup said.
It comes after the Home Office had agreed to amend parts of the policy related to considering an individual’s reasons why Rwanda is not a safe country for them.
